This will probably be less deep than you'd expect. :)
I'm old--well, I'm 45, and I only feel old some days, but today's one of those days so I'm old. I'm tired. I don't get enough sleep, it's cold and grey out, and I don't necessarily feel like thinking too hard. If I picked up a comic today, it would be comfort reading. That's not always the case but it often is, and it does mean that I don't put on my deep-thinking cap before I open a book, and I often-though-not-always read them with my kid brain, not my grown-up brain. That certainly colors my commentary.
I consider myself a feminist, have done since I first heard of it thirty years or so ago, but I clearly don't have the same feminist sensibilities as a lot of folks do. Which is fine, it's a range of opinion, not a single point.
But it does, sometimes, make me feel a bit intellectually lazy when I totally miss something that someone else points out.
And it does, sometimes, make me question myself when I still don't see what's being referenced--or, sometimes, I see it but don't feel that the interpretation is as obvious as the writer thinks. "Feminist" is not one of my primary self-identifications, so I don't worry a lot about not belonging to the club if I don't, but it does cross my mind, and it does make me think about whether my literature is beating on my ideals.
The problem is that, at this point, most people agree on the more clear-cut aspects of equality--that people should get equal pay for equal work is a given, for example, not something that anyone seriously argues against anymore. What's left can be pretty vague, and often subject to individual interpretation. That doesn't mean it's not valid, just that it's not really quantifiable. And it's hard to argue a perception-based point when one party's basic assumptions (about what's sexy/sexist/appropriate) are so fundamentally different from the other's.
Personal example: As a teenager back in the 70s, my take on feminism was that "women should be equal to men." What this meant to me, back then, was that women should be able to do anything that men could, and vice versa (obvious biological limitations excepted, of course). That was pretty much it--and at that time, that was a big deal because it wasn't a given. This is all pretty clear-cut stuff, and consists of relatively easy points to argue. It also, clearly, tends to retain the existing cultural model--the idea that women can do the same jobs as men came along with the idea that women could be like men and act in the same ways as men, it didn't question the validity of those ways.
(Please note that I'm not claiming that everything is perfect in that arena now, just stating that no one who wants to be taken seriously is going to argue that any of that is a bad idea. The culture as a whole has internalized the notion of equal pay for equal work, work should be done based on qualifications rather than gender, and so forth. Obviously it doesn't always work out that way, but it's a generally accepted ideal.)
And you know, my comics reflected that--by this time the Wasp had stopped mooning over anything in pants and become Avengers' chair, and the Invisible Girl was now considered the most powerful member of her team. Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman had their own very different books. The Cat became Tigra and made numerous appearances during which she generally kicked some butt. On the whole, though, their new strengths were the same strengths shared by their male colleagues. Their superheroic potential was made greater, but only by making them more equivalent (rather than equal) to the male heroes, and it would never have occurred to me to question that because it was pretty awesome compared to what had gone before.
When I hit college, I was introduced to the idea of valuing gender differences--that the standard model of behavior (corporate, academic, family) shouldn't be accepted without question. While it was still important that a woman could be as good a "company man" as anyone, now it was in question whether that traditional model was the best model. It's not obvious stuff, not when it was a big enough deal that women could now take on roles that were previously reserved for men. But the idea that, to be a good feminist, you didn't have to "act like a man"--that you can be a feminist and still take on traditional female roles as long as it's a choice and not a requirement--was probably more empowering than just about anything else, because there wasn't the subtle ranking of women who can and do play with the big boys over women who choose not to. (Although not necessarily. After the now-thirteen-year-old was born, I joined a mailing list for feminist stay-at-home moms, and there was quite a range of women there, a number of whom took all sorts of crap from other feminists because of their choice to stay home--and this was in the mid-90s!)
You didn't see much of this in comics. Superheroines are sort of by definition going to be part of the established paradigm, at least in terms of what they do. And to be honest, Marvel never has done all that well with making Sue Richards' role as a mother something significant (or Reed's role as a father, for that matter), other than the whole "mama bear protecting her cub" thing, which isn't all that interesting. In fact, the only character I can think of offhand who has retained her personality while taking on more of a traditional female role is, maybe, Jessica Jones--and it was already part of her character that she wasn't comfortable with the role of traditional superhero. Still, you do see her with her baby once in a while, which in comics is a pretty big thing.
And at least you no longer see so much of the tough super-women showing their feminine side by going shopping because that's the main "woman thing" the writer could think of. :)
But no, I don't think that this is a concept that has translated well to comics. I don't think that comics have come up with non-traditional hero models that work. I'm not sure they will. Just look at all the discussion of whether an interesting story can be told about superheroes who are parents, or superheroes who are married? The implication is that no one really wants to try, and I'm guessing that that extends to a lot of potential alternatives. I'll continue to read, regardless, but I'd rather see that dealt with than many of the other issues folks talk about.
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